The rising medical costs linked to tobacco-related illnesses and deaths, along with the aging of the Chinese population, may cripple the China's social security system in just two decades, an official warned on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

Tobacco-linked deaths have been on the rise over the past decade and are expected to reach a peak between 2025 and 2030, a time when China is set to overtake Japan as the world's most aged society, said Liang Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The combination of the two will put a severe strain the country's social security system, Liang said.

According to research by Hu Angang, a professor at Tsinghua University, health care and other smoking-related costs exceeded the tobacco industry's economic gains by 61.8 billion yuan in 2010.

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world. It kills nearly six million people worldwide each year, including over 600,000 who die from exposure to second-hand smoke.

In China, it kills over one million people each year, where nearly 30 percent of adults, or more than 300 million, smoke. Another 740 million people are exposed to second-hand smoke annually.

(China.org.cn July 14, 2012)

據新華社報道，一名官員本周四警告稱，由煙草引發的疾病和死亡帶來的醫療費用越來越高，隨著中國人口老齡化加劇，只需20年我國的社會保障體系就有可能被拖垮。

中國疾病預防控制中心副主任梁曉峰表示，過去十年間，煙草引發的死亡人數一直在增多，并有望在2025至2030年間達到一個高峰，那時中國將超越日本成為世界上老齡化最為嚴重的國家。

梁曉峰說，兩個因素加在一起將嚴重影響我國的社會保障體系。

據清華大學胡鞍鋼教授所做的一份研究顯示，2010年醫療花費和其它吸煙相關的花費超過煙草業經濟收入618億元。

吸煙是世界上主要的可預防死因之一。每年，煙草在全世界奪去近600萬人的生命，其中60多萬人是死于吸二手煙。

在中國，近30%的成年人，也就是超過3億成年人吸煙，每年因此死亡的人數超過100萬。另外，每年還有7.4億人生活在二手煙的環境中。